Negro spiritual

“ The marvel is, that the Negro has sufficient moral vitality left to cut his way through the whirlpool of licentiousness to the solid rock of Christian character. From the harem life of promiscuous and unnameable sins of slavery, some of which were the natural and fatal growth of pagan vices, others the fruit of prostitution, to the making of one clean, beautiful, noble and divine family and home, covers a period of intense, moral, spiritual and intellectual development, more significant than the geologic transformation of ages. ”

“ To treat it in that way is to miss the essence of the Negro action and reaction upon American religion. We must think of the transplanting of the Negro as transplanting to the United States a certain spiritual entity, and an unbreakable set of world-old beliefs, manners, morals, superstitions and religious observances. The religion of Africa is the universal animism or fetishism of primitive peoples, rising to polytheism and approaching monotheism chiefly, but not wholly, as a result of Christian and Islamic missions. ”

“ Just therein may it be characterized as a pioneer work, a genuine contribution. In a larger sense it is more than the history of the Negro church; it is the very life history of the Negro race in America, so intimately have the spiritual strivings of the Negro been bound up with his sentiments and interests, his habits and endeavors, his situation and circumstances, his monuments and edifices, his poetry and song. ”

“ He would be a daring prophet who, in face of these examples, and of the instances of moral greatness actually produced by this race, should assert that something noble in character, some unique type of spiritual excellence, some splendid order of manhood, may not yet emerge from this now degraded and unpromising race. What the nature, the moral capacity of the American negro is, future ages will determine ”

“ And yet out of the loins of this race have sprung the moral and spiritual law-givers of mankind. We should not be discouraged because the Negro does not make a bee-line from Egyptian bondage to the Promised Land beyond the Jordan. ”

“ One way this influence has been brought to bear is through the actual mingling of blood. But this is the smaller cause of Negro influence. Heredity is always stronger through the influence of acts and deeds and imitations than through actual blood descent; and the presence of the Negro in the United States quite apart from the mingling of blood has always strongly influenced the land. We have spoken of its influence in politics, literature and art, but we have yet to speak of that potent influence in another sphere of the world’s spiritual activities: religion. ”

“ The white man in the mass cannot compete with the Negro in spiritual endowment. Many centuries of civilization have attenuated his original gifts and have made his mind dominate his spirit. He has wandered too far from the elementary human needs and their easy means of natural satisfaction. The deep and satisfying harmony which the soul requires no longer arises from the incidents of daily life. The requirements for practical efficiency in a world alien to his spirit have worn thin his religion and devitalized his art. ”

“ To all this we must add the peculiar spiritual contribution which the Negro made to Labor. Always physical fact has its spiritual complement, but in this case the gift is apt to be forgotten or slurred over. ”

“ Shall a line be drawn which shall separate the Negroes, and assign them as a race to the position of inferiors irrespective of merit or character, and merely on the ground of race or color?
To narrow the discussion, we leave out of view the civil or political aspect of the question and confine ourselves to the religious, and we propose to give a few illustrations. A Negro in every way qualified, in character, piety, and intelligence, applies for membership in a white church. Shall the color-line be drawn and he be refused admission for no other reason than that he is a Negro? ”

“ And the master class reposed more faith in their slaves' religion ofttimes than they did in their own. Doubtless much of the reverential feeling that pervades the American home to-day, above that of all other nations, is the result of the Negro mammy's devotion and loyalty to God. ”

“ But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the “lower” races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. ”

“ The states or people that favor this equality and amalgamation of the white and black races, God will exterminate. To make the negro, the political, social and religious equal of the white race by law, by statute and by constitutions, can easily be effected in words; but so to elevate the negro jure divino, is simply impossible. You can not elevate a beast to the level of a son of God—a son of Adam and Eve—but you may depress the sons of Adam and Eve, with their impress of the Almighty, down to the level of a beast. ”

“ Now again, at last, it seems as if that which we are accomplishing and that which God has spoken in all these ages is again jeopardized, and as if this human right shall be denied in the South. Men doubt whether there is in the Negro more than the capacity of a subordinate race, and say that to educate him is to lift him out of his sphere. Brethren and friends, there is manhood in the Negro race. ”

“ His blood infected with the poison of his low habitation, his body shrivelled by disease, his intellect veiled in pagan superstitions, the noblest yearnings of his soul strangled at birth by the savage passions of a nature abandoned to sensuality,—the poor Negro of Africa deserves more our pity than our contempt. ”

“ The Negro has already been pointed out many times as a religious animal,—a being of that deep emotional nature which turns instinctively toward the supernatural. Endowed with a rich tropical imagination and a keen, delicate appreciation of Nature, the transplanted African lived in a world animate with gods and devils, elves and witches; full of strange influences,—of Good to be implored, of Evil to be propitiated. Slavery, then, was to him the dark triumph of Evil over him. All the hateful powers of the Under-world were striving against him, and a spirit of revolt and revenge filled his heart. ”

“ Phillis Wheatley has been mentioned already. So, in the midst of darkness and oppression, the Negro race in America, without the use of the Christian church, schoolhouse, or printing-press, produced a poetess, an astronomer, a mathematician, and a physician, who, had they been white, would have received monuments and grateful memorials at the hands of their countrymen. But even their color cannot rob them of the immortality their genius earned. ”

“ That is the spirit which the Negro encounters in the American church; that is the spirit which crushes him down and crowds him back whenever he tries to rise and advance. He and his are denied the White man’s chance to make the best of themselves and to get the most out of themselves. ”

“ Like the oscillations of the pendulum of a clock the Negro is swinging from an extreme religious fanaticism to an extreme rationalism. But he will finally take his position upon a solid religious basis; and to his "faith" will add virtue, knowledge, and good works. Everywhere under good influences he has made a good citizen. No issue in the State has been foreign to him. ”

“ In the Bible, he leads not only the one unalterable text, "Servants, obey your masters," but also, "Ye are all brethren." "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." "He is no respecter of persons."
The Negro in this country has begun to enjoy the blessings of a free citizenship. Under the sunny sky of a Christian civilization he hears the clarion voices of progress about him, urging him onward and upward. From across the ocean, out of the jungles of Africa, come the voices of the benighted and perishing. ”

“ His death affected the ministry and churches as when 'a standard-bearer fainteth.' His familiar face was ever welcome. His resolute bearing, his unswerving fidelity to Christ, to truth, to the church at large, and his own denomination in particular, and his life-long service as a philanthropist, his devotion to the interests of the negro, to whom he was linked by ties of consanguinity and of sympathy, made him a felt power for good in our State and in our entire country. No man among us was more sincerely respected or more truly loved. ”

“ From the Bible, likewise, the Negro draws justification for his failure to be actively resentful of his wrongs. And who best represents the Christian spirit, the Aryan raging over the loss of a tooth, demanding a tooth in return and refusing to be comforted without it, or the humble black, who hardly smitten on one cheek, meekly present the other to the smiter? In the lowliness of the Founder of his faith the Negro finds comfort for his own poverty. He is not so engrossed with earthly things, but he has a constant eye on Paradise. ”

“ As he grew in culture, there came expressions of the deep consolation of resignation which is born of the wisdom that the Negro race is its own, all-sufficient justification. Naturally, sadness is the note most often struck; but the frequently-expressed joy, blithesome, carefree, overflowing joy, reveals what an enviable creature the Negro is in his happy moods. No less evident is that native understanding and wisdom which—from the homely and crude expressions of their slaves, to the scholarly and cultured contributions of to-day—we know go with the Negro's endowment. ”

“ Some prophetic souls are looking out upon a most perplexing and perilous problem with profound solicitude, and extending to us their sympathy and prayers for our work. More, many more, are teaching and preaching that God has created the Negro race to fill forever a place of inferiority, and that he must stay down in the bog or in some way be destroyed. ”

“ But twenty-one years, and of wretched environment too, have sufficed to show that souls clad in the blackest African setting are capable of the highest thought and most difficult studies. The evidence on this point is abundant and conclusive. To deny the negro this ability is only to advertise one’s ignorance or prejudice. ”

“ The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from the African forests, where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people's sorrow, despair, and hope. ”

“ On the other hand, such melodies as 'Go down Moses,' 'Four and Twenty Eiders on Their Knees,' 'Run, Mary, Run,' these speak from the very soul of the black race and no white man could have conceived them. They have a dignity barbaric, aloof and wholly individual which lifts them cloud-high above any 'White' hymns that the Negro might have overheard. ”

“ Now, what we ask for the negro is that he be judged by his best and not by his worst. Of course, the best is always in the minority, but that is the way we are judged. If these same men were to go into the South and go into the negroes’ homes, they would find there very often excellent comfort. Some one has asked whether the negro has any of this race prejudice in him. ”

“ Providence, which has not endowed the negro with intellectual powers of the highest order, has given him an amount of heart and enthusiasm to which we are strangers. He is warm and ardent in his attachments, fierce in his resentfulness, terrible in his revenge. The black troops of our West Indian colonies, when let loose, fight with more fury and bloodthirstiness than those of any white race. This temperament is carried into religion, and nowhere on earth does our Lord find a more loving and zealous disciple than in the converted and Christianized negro. ”

“ But back of this still broods silently the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart, the stirring, unguided might of powerful human souls who have lost the guiding star of the past and seek in the great night a new religious ideal. Some day the Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living—Liberty, Justice, and Right—is marked “For White People Only.” ”

“ The new race of Negro individualists arose. The old “mammies” and “uncles” were a people apart, and are dying out fast now. The new Negroes are with and for themselves. They make shift to be happy and to amuse themselves without the white man. ”

“ It is difficult to explain clearly the present critical stage of Negro religion. First, we must remember that living as the blacks do in close contact with a great modern nation, and sharing, although imperfectly, the soul-life of that nation, they must necessarily be affected more or less directly by all the religious and ethical forces that are to-day moving the United States. ”

“ Methodist and Baptist ways of worship, songs and religious dances absorbed much from the Negroes and whatever there is in American religion today of stirring and wild enthusiasm, of loud conversions and every day belief in an anthropomorphic God owes its origin in a no small measure to the black man.
Of course most of the influence of the Negro preachers was thrown into their own churches and to their own people and it was from the Negro church as an organization that Negro religious influence spread most widely to white people. ”